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National Service Blog

Individuals experiencing long-term homelessness also often suffer from medical fragility caused or aggravated by life on the streets and in shelters. Lacking stable access to housing and preventative health care services, they become “high-utilizers” of costly inpatient and emergency care.

The Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH) advances high-quality solutions and cost-effective programs to improve the lives of the most vulnerable people in our society by supporting locally-based organizations that provide access to public resources that enable the chronically homeless to connect to homes, health care, and the community. As a Social Innovation Fund (SIF) intermediary, CSH is leading a project that integrates health care and housing for individuals with multiple, chronic health conditions who experience homelessness.

These individuals often fall into the gaps between systems of care. A shelter provider and a hospital, for example, seek to meet different needs of an individual. The shelter may overlook or be unable to help the individual with health problems, making it harder for him to find and keep stable housing. The hospital, in turn, may overlook non-medical factors such as housing instability that could make its treatment plans for a patient less effective.

CSH bridges these gaps by integrating supportive housing – affordable housing and comprehensive services – with special emphasis on health services to improve access and outcomes while lowering costs for public systems such as Medicaid.

More than 40 grantee representatives, federal officials, and non-profit and social sector leaders participated in the three-day workshop, which featured rich conversations about lessons learned from early implementation of PFS projects, funded with $12 million from the SIF last fall.

Nearly a million New Yorkers earn less than $20,000 per year because they lack the skills needed to secure a living-wage job. Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Jobs for New Yorkers Task Force seeks to better understand and combat this “skills gap.”

Most low-income families face a litany of financial and employment challenges, which is why Social Innovation Fund (SIF) intermediary the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) is expanding its comprehensive Financial Opportunity Centers and using data to inform these expansion efforts.These 75 centers nationwide represent both a workforce-development and asset-building programming model with services such as job readiness, employment training, financial coaching and help in accessing public benefits.

The Social Innovation Fund (SIF) is a credible and consequential model for meeting unmet human needs in American communities. So says a new book providing a comprehensive history of the Obama Administration’s efforts to promote evidence-based social policy.

When it comes to documenting the impact of services on some of the most disadvantaged Americans, REDF is sitting firmly at the cutting edge of innovation.The California-based nonprofit is a leader in identifying the “social return on investment” (SROI), an approach to assess the effect of services not only on an individual but also on society at large.

I have several projects in response to the President's call to service. First of all I have, for 13 years, served on Veterans of Foreign Wars Honor Guard teams where I conduct funeral services for our heroes. I do the reading to honor the passing veterans. I have done hundreds and hundreds of funerals, if not thousands at a National Cemetery and private cemeteries in two states.

This special SSIR supplement, sponsored by GEO, captures the latest thinking about how nonprofit organizations, grantmakers, public funders, and social entrepreneurs can increase the impact of successful solutions to urgent social challenges. Includes interviews with Michael Smith of the Social Innovation Fund and Carla Javits of REDF (a SIF intermediary) on using public-private partnerships to achieve scale.

New York Nonprofit Press (NY) -The organization places hundreds of job seekers each year, including homeless and formerly incarcerated job seekers and offers employment preparation, training, job placement, retention and advancement support. Madison Strategies is funded by a prestigious federal Social Innovation Fund grant and support from the Robin Hood Foundation, the Tulsa Community Foundation, and others.

The Obama administration is now in the fifth year of a program, known as the Social Innovation Fund, to use the private sector to identify successful local organizations that attack social problems such as teen pregnancy, delinquency, school dropout, and low school achievement, and, combining federal resources with local and foundation matching funds, to expand these successful local programs.